RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Novel Electrodes for Reliable EEG Recordings on Coarse and Curly Hair
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2020.02.26.965202
DO 10.1101/2020.02.26.965202
A1 Etienne, Arnelle
A1 Laroia, Tarana
A1 Weigle, Harper
A1 Afelin, Amber
A1 Kelly, Shawn K
A1 Krishnan, Ashwati
A1 Grover, Pulkit
YR 2020
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/02/27/2020.02.26.965202.abstract
AB EEG is a powerful and affordable brain sensing and imaging tool used extensively for the diagnosis of neurological disorders (e.g. epilepsy), brain computer interfacing, and basic neuroscience. Unfortunately, most EEG electrodes and systems are not designed to accommodate coarse and curly hair common in individuals of African descent. This can lead to poor quality data that might be discarded in scientific studies after recording from a broader population set, and for clinical diagnoses, lead to an uncomfortable and/or emotionally taxing experience, and, in the worst cases, misdiagnosis. In this work, we design a system to explicitly accommodate coarse and curly hair, and demonstrate that, across time, our electrodes, in conjunction with appropriate braiding, attain substantially (~10x) lower impedance than state-of-the-art systems. This builds on our prior work that demonstrated that braiding hair in patterns consistent with the clinical standard 10-20 arrangement leads to improved impedance with existing systems.